filesystem slow read behavior, possible errors

[ChezRD]

point:
files in one directory cannot be more than 100k or something. filesystem will stuck on read this directory. even delete one file can stop the system

anyway solution:
add at least 3 dir levels inner based on image name or other algorithm to prevent this type of errors

as example http://shots.m18.ru
but we use nginx to send static files by pattern as address to image is like domain/image/longlonglonghash.png
when real file not under root/image but under next directory files/s/o/m/e/longlonglonghash.png

[juggl3r]

or for easier way to sort the files you can do several steps of splitting like 'extension' then first 2 characters
example :
1- 78805a221a988e79ef3f42d7c5bfd418.png
/files/png/7/8/78805a221a988e79ef3f42d7c5bfd418.png

2- 943359f44dc87f6a1679c987280e8dc7.jpg
/files/jpg/9/4/943359f44dc87f6a1679c987280e8dc7.jpg

this way u wont need db's and extra resource consumption just a tiny line that will read the filename and return the path

$ext = end(explode('.', $filename));
$imgfile = /files/$ext/$filename[0]/$filename[1]/$filename

and for the upload it should be pretty much the same where u check if the directory of the first chars exist or if u want to create empty directories to save the mkdir time its up to u

cheers